Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller H200 - Manual (Page 87)

Glossary
87
SATA
Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, a physical storage interface standard,
is a serial link that provides point-to-point connections between devices.
The thinner serial cables allow for better airflow within the system and permit
smaller chassis designs.
SCSI
SCSI stands for "Small Computer System Interface," a processor-independent
standard interface for system-level interfacing between a computer and
intelligent devices including hard-drives, floppy disks, CD-ROM, printer,
scanners and many more.
SCSIport
SCSIport driver is a Microsoft
®
driver for Windows
®
XP storage architecture,
delivering SCSI commands to the storage targets. The SCSIport driver works
well with storage using parallel SCSI.
Serial Architecture
Serial architectures have emerged to deliver higher performance by allowing
more bandwidth per device pathway than their parallel counterparts.
Serial architecture connections consist of a single pair of transmission signals
that contain an embedded clock for self-clocking, enabling clock speed to be
easily scaled. Serial bus architectures also support a network of dedicated
point-to-point device connections, versus the multi-drop architectures of
parallel buses, to deliver full bandwidth to each device, eliminate the need for
bus arbitration, reduce latency, and greatly simplify hot-plug and hot-swap
system implementations.
Serial Technology
Serial storage technology, specifically Serial ATA, Serial-Attached SCSI and
PCI Express, address the architectural limitations of their parallel counterparts
to deliver highly scalable performance. The technology draws its name from the
way it transmits signals - in a single stream, or serially, compared to multiple
streams for parallel. The main advantage of serial technology is that while it
moves data in a single stream, it wraps data bits into individual packets that are
transferred up to 30 times faster than parallel technology data.
PERC H200.book Page 87 Tuesday, July 13, 2010 4:15 PM